Emergency physicians regularly diagnose contagious disease, administer sedative or hypnotic medications, and manage violent patients or patients with medical conditions which may be unstable. Patients with these conditions leave the emergency department and may injure, disable or even kill a third party. Although 'duty to third party' law has rarely involved emergency physicians, in examining the court's reasoning in cases involving other physicians, there is no reason to think that the same considerations and rationale would not be applied in the emergency department environment.